Cars

Ananya Roy’s thin yet sturdy hands were glued to the black screen full of bright colorful photos like a mirage in a desert. Her mind quickly leaped onto them to find immediate relief from something that bothered her.

Her dog ‘BowBow’ with a striking golden coat ran around the house with no furniture, from one corner to another.

‘Okay okay we are going now’. She looked at BowBow and then at the time showing up on the sleek smartphone, standing tall like a Ms. Universe. The corners of her pale lips turned slightly downwards as her thin eyelashes flickered and creased lines appeared on her forehead.

As she took BowBow outside, the pleasant evening breeze brushed her lovely curls falling carelessly on her shoulders.

BowBow sneaked close to her, sniffing the fresh breeze and the scent of blooming flowers on the sideways while Ananya walked with her face straight ahead.

She blinked her eyelids to look around. ‘Same old, nothing new’. Her mind directed her to take out her smartphone from the pockets of her loose cotton kurti.

While BowBow’s head dropped as he made a slight whimpering sound, Ananya still walked with her head immersed into lives of her old classmates she barely talked to in real life. They returned home and Ananya headed straight into her room.

She sat on a plastic chair looking at the laptop with a looming deadline. Her light brown oval face grew smaller and her leaf shaped eyes stared at the screen.

Suddenly someone pushed the door open.

‘Why are you working till so late?’ Sara said in a loud voice.

She pulled Ananya’s hand and took her outside to a small balcony facing the hills with the sun starting to set.

‘The orange glow in the sky will last only for a few more minutes. Look how beautiful it is’ she said sitting on a chair opposite to Ananya.

Ananya’s head raised to look at the sun with a grim expression.

As she sat down with her head bent low, She said ‘I don’t know why but my designs are getting rejected again and again.’

Sara’s round grey eyes turned wide. Ananya looked up to meet her gaze.

‘Remember how your eyes lit up when we discuss cars?’

‘Oh yes, I love cars. I just love designing them’ replied Ananya with a spark in her eyes which reflected in her voice now as it grew stronger.

BowBow wagged his tail as he came closer to Ananya. She bent down to wrap her arms around his golden fur, brushing her cheeks against it. She took him in her lap and sat on the chair with her wide eyes lit up as she faced Sara with a smile.

Her face glowed under a moonlit sky as they spoke about their favorite topic - ‘Cars’, with Ananya’s mind brimming with new ideas for her next project.

An excerpt from Business Insider:

Want to live longer? Make close friends —because research shows that friends can affect your health even more than family. The 2005 Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging found that close relationships with children and other relatives had very little impact on how long you live, but people with the most friends tended to outlive those with the fewest by 22 percent.

Better yet, a clinical review of nearly 150 studies found that people with strong social ties had a 50 percent better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status, and cause of death, than those with weaker ties. (The conclusion was based on information about more than 300,000 individuals who were followed for an average of 7.5 years.)

In fact, according to the researchers, the health risk of having few friends was similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and more dangerous than being obese or not exercising in terms of decreasing your lifespan.

Keep in mind that means real friends. Not Facebook friends or Instagram followers.